AUSTRALIA might have a new hero when it comes to plain speech and clear thinking on the question of youth crime, writes David Penberthy.

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BACK in happier times, before he'd attacked one of our photographers and smashed our $3000 camera into about 47 pieces, Mark Latham and I spent some interesting time together in the battling western Sydney suburb of Miller.

Miller is like so many suburbs on the outskirts of our biggest cities.

It has high unemployment, little government infrastructure, few businesses, a shocking public housing mix (with predominantly rundown homes), and marked most of all by intergenerational welfare dependency.

The reason we went out to Miller for a few days was that, in its eternal wisdom, the State Government had shut down the local police station.

It used to be located next to the Miller shops. In one of those "der" moments in public policy, the closure of the police station and the absence of visible policing meant that crime had gone up. Who would have thunk it?

In his typically droll way, Latham rolled his eyes while we were out there having a coffee near the local community centre, which had one of those large feel-good murals on its wall. "What is it about these damned murals?' he asked. "It's like a rule in Australia, the more shithouse your suburb, the more likely it is to have a mural."

Latham's view was that the bureaucracy had parted company with the people of Miller in making such an obviously reckless decision involving public safety and security, because it was either too big and slow to identify problems, or too caught up with faddish policy nonsense to persist with old-fashioned but proven solutions to fighting an issue such as crime.

Australia might have a new hero when it comes to plain speech and clear thinking on the question of youth crime.

He comes from the judiciary, which rarely receives any plaudits from the mainstream media but which, on this occasion, deserves to be recognised for taking such a sleeves-up, commonsense approach.

The person in question is one of the most senior judges in South Australia, senior Youth Court judge Stephen McEwen, who has used a blistering judgment to hit out at the "obsessive control freaks" in our government departments making arms-length decisions running contrary to the welfare of troubled youths.

Judge McEwen made the comments while hearing the case of a 14-year-old boy who had been charged with trespassing and theft offences.

He had been told that the boy was repeatedly running away from juvenile detention so that he could live with his brother, 15, who was being housed at a different youth facility.

Judge McEwen had instructed the department to house the boys in the same facility as soon as possible to lessen their chances of reoffending. When he found out that that had not occurred, and that the sluggish department was instead "'assessing the possibility" of supervised contact between the young brothers, he went pleasantly berserk.

"I'm sick and tired of that entire department being obstructive control freaks, constantly throwing up pseudo-reasons dressed up in social work speak for refusing to just have a look at the blindingly obvious," he said.

"They hire people who are social workers who are trained and probably want to do social work, but they don't let them because no one will do anything without running it past a bunch of psychologists.

"I think it is just utterly pathetic. A bunch of probably highly paid experts sat around at a meeting - seven people all with titles like 'senior this' - and came up with that facile, pathetic nonsense.

"What's happening in that department? I mean, do they have any stationery or do they have to send that to psychological services to decide whether to order any pens and papers?

"If they had a conference they wouldn't be able to provide coffee or biscuits because psychological services would be deciding what to provide.

"Every one of those people who was at that meeting ought to go have a long, hard look at themselves in the mirror.

"We can't guarantee that (the boys) living together would work out and magically stop them offending . . . but why not have a decent crack at putting them at the same place?"

Aside from being rare to hear a judge speaking in such plain and direct language, the content of Judge McEwen's spray is something governments everywhere should reflect on. The "der" moment in Judge McEwen's judgment was the failure

of this government department to

take a commonsense approach or possibly no approach at all, bogged

down as it appears to be in process

on an issue where housing these two

kids together could be the best way to curb misbehaviour.

The worrying thing about this case is that it is probably a depressing little microcosm of how bogged down society has become in ticking artificial boxes, adhering to rigid processes devised by external management consultants, so much so that it is now possible in 2013 for people to feel like they are working when they are not actually doing anything at all.

It is obvious from Judge McEwen's comments is that no decision had been made about his proposal, other than to stop it from going ahead, and then stand around having a bit of a chin scratch while absolutely nothing occurred.

His remarks should be distributed and used as a check-list for any organisation that confuses holding meetings with actually doing things.

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